ife is about to change for Mun (Lee). Having successfully undergone a cornea transplant, she has a chance to see again, something she's not been able to do since childhood. And although the recovery process is painful, Mun has the care and support of her sister and grandmother to help her along the way.
Mun's road back to the world of the sighted also includes therapy sessions with the young Dr. Wah (Chou), who is responsible for helping the independent but disoriented young woman deal with the mental and emotional obstacles she faces with her restored vision. And yet despite all this
help, Mun soon realizes, still something is wrong—terribly wrong.
With her new eyes, Mun has been seeing things. Ghosts of those who have suffered sudden, horrible deaths haunting places and people, hungry for an end. Other dark, mysterious, faceless figures who appear at the sides of the newly dead. A raven. A hospital gurney. And a bedroom in which she's never been, but of which she seems to know every detail.
All these apparitions are made even more terrifying by the fact that Mun has to bear them alone—that is, unless she can convince Dr. Wah that she's not just losing her mind, and if she actually can keep from losing her mind after seeing all this horror and misery. She will need Wah's strength to add to her own if she is to learn the mystery of her curse, which struck her when she took someone else's eyes.
Some real scares and surprises
Over the past several years, moviegoing audiences around the world have been offered a number of variations on the Sixth Sense's "I see dead people" theme. They've also been exposed to the wonders of Asian horror films like Ringu. And while it's not entirely appropriate (i.e., accurate or fair) to think of the Pang brothers' pan-Asian hit The Eye solely in these terms, as it's got a good deal going for it that is uniquely its own, the comparisons are fairly unavoidable. Nor are these the only two influences that appear in the film—everything from Hitchcock to manga to Sam Raimi to Wong Kar-Wai makes its way into The Eye, and for the most part successfully so. That is, until the movie runs into the
same problem its protagonist eventually does—an identity crisis.
It all starts out promisingly enough—with a good measure of heart-taxing, fear-response-inducing moments, a compelling storyline, some attractive characters and much stylish and challenging cinematography and editing. Mun's frights come from blurred vision or the corner of the eye, in the dead of night or the horribly clear light of day. Then (around midway through the film), like a shift in light from a cloud passing overhead, something happens. Maybe the money started to run out, or maybe the work simply started to buckle under the weight of everything it was trying to do, be and quote. Whatever the reason, The Eye loses some of its momentum, its quality thins out a bit, and its narrative becomes somewhat uneven. And its solid special effects and slick visuals become somewhat rarer, though some ground is made up here by a series of intriguing flashback scenes and some surprising plot twists.
The more sentimental elements of the story become over time even more sentimental and less convincing—like the romance of sorts that develops between Mun and Wah (who looks old enough maybe to be the woman's concerned younger brother, not her doctor-cum-lover). Lee is an appealing, attractive protagonist, embodying the pathos, vulnerability and spirit her character requires. Her terror is beautiful, and her character's development intricate. But as the film goes on a fair amount of this subtlety gets pushed closer to the realm of melodrama. Viewers familiar with some of the more conventional features of popular Hong Kong cinema may feel more comfortable than the average viewer with some of the moves this film makes by the time all of its mysteries are revealed. Yet, while not a perfect mesh of styles, The Eye does contain enough that could keep many audiences fairly engaged—and scared.
